Looking back – in Neil Sperry’s words…
Notes from our founder
I stood at the southwest corner of the intersection of Louisiana and Kentucky Streets one warm day that August 1991 talking to the city manager about the idea.
I had forgotten it. Somehow the idea even made it into The Sherman Democrat newspaper. But the idea didn’t take root and grow at that time.
The basic idea was to plant all the public areas: medians, rights-of-way, parks, school grounds, cemeteries – all the public areas with crape myrtles.
All the known varieties of crape myrtles. Historic ones in the older neighborhoods. Newer ones in the rapidly developing neighborhoods to the west.
The dream was to see people waiting in line to take hot-air balloon rides over the city to see the crape myrtles in full bloom.
I had worked alongside Dr. Don Egolf from the United States National Arboretum as he trialed new crape myrtle seedlings at the A&M Center in the mid-1970s.
I knew this could be a travel and tourism project, and it certainly would be a civic beautification project.
However, as a horticulturist, my main interest was, and still is, the serious botanic nature of it.
I found early in life that ideas are cheap. It’s follow-through that is much more difficult, and my follow-through wasn’t very good. The city manager had other things on his mind. His city was on the brink of fast growth. I dropped the whole idea for six years.
May 15, 1997, was one of the biggest days of my life. I got to visit a special recovery high school called Sobriety High in Edina, Minnesota. My wife and counselors from McKinney ISD had been to Sobriety High six months earlier. That school and those visits were the headwaters of Serenity High in McKinney, but that’s a story for another time, another place.
I was exhausted emotionally when I returned that night. I was scheduled to put on a landscape design school at Dowell Middle School in McKinney. As my friend and co-worker, Dr. Steve George of Texas A&M, spoke during the first portion of the program, I stood visiting with a man I didn’t know, telling him about my trip to Minnesota and how excited I was.
Continuing the chat, I mentioned to him the dream I’d had six years earlier about a “Crape Myrtle Trails of McKinney” and what it could mean for our city. The next day, the phone rang, and it was “that man.” Rick Traylor told me he had enjoyed the visit, and that he was chair of the McKinney Quality of Life Committee, and that they would like to consider funding the initial part of our work in developing the Trails.
Rick scheduled a planning retreat with Randy Williams of the McKinney Chamber and several other community leaders. We actually met in the same building now housing the McKinney Parks Department – off Stonebridge Drive, just south of US 380.
The not-for-profit Crape Myrtle Trails of McKinney Foundation formed in 1998.
A Quality of Life grant funded a master plan for our project. We hired renowned landscape architect Naud Burnett of Dallas to develop the plan. Mr. Burnett had done many similar jobs over his career, notably several for the Dallas Arboretum.
The first official plantings were made at McKinney High School in honor of Valedictorian, Danny Lowe, in September 1998.
The landscape firm Newman, Jackson, Bieberstein was retained to develop planting plans for Eldorado Parkway from Highway 5 (McDonald Street) west to Hardin. We held a public meeting to show our plans to McKinney in August, 1999.
The first median plantings of the variety Tuscarora were made in September, 1999, on the east side of Eldorado at Hardin.
The first major median plantings of crape myrtles were made in September 2000 and April 2001, along Eldorado Parkway from Highway 5 (McDonald Street) west to Hardin Boulevard, also along U.S. 380 just west of U.S. 75.
In upcoming years, subsequent plantings continued west on Eldorado to Orchid and eventually to Ridge. Those were followed in ensuing years by plantings on Ridge, Hardin and McKinney Ranch Road (all planted in 2007). Soon some 15 miles of medians had been planted featuring crape myrtles.
World Collection Park…
I had long had the dream of seeing all the known varieties of crape myrtles growing side by side in one location – a park within the city of McKinney. From a horticultural standpoint such a collection would allow varietal comparisons of important factors such as dates of first and last blooms, winter hardiness, fall color and pest resistance. It would also serve as a repository of genetic protoplasm of heirloom varieties no longer being grown in the nursery industry.
Developer David Craig met with me at Craig Ranch as we discussed such a park. He expressed great interest in having it be within Craig Ranch, and he and the city began work on setting 7 acres aside for the creation of the World Collection Park on Collin McKinney Parkway. Landscape architect Rowland Jackson developed the landscape plans, and the fully planted park was dedicated in 2011. Extreme weather later that year (drought) and in subsequent years (cold) caused the loss of several varieties of crape myrtles, but the Crape Myrtle Trails Foundation and the City of McKinney have continued their work to complete and even expand the dream of the park.
Mothers Day project…
In an effort to distribute crape myrtles throughout the city of McKinney, the Crape Myrtle Trails of McKinney Foundation decided to distribute a 1-gallon crape myrtle to fifth graders in McKinney I.S.D.
Beginning in 2007 we chose four elementary campuses for our project. The following couple of years we distributed plants to a different set of elementary schools, but soon we decided to include all fifth graders on every campus every year. It has amounted to thousands of crape myrtles being distributed over the years. There are mothers in McKinney who happily recount planting multiple crape myrtles brought home by their children as Mother’s Day gifts.
The Crape Myrtle Trails board has had terrific financial support over those years from civic groups, businesses and individuals in making this happen, and we thank them all!